


Tangling Shadows

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Deadwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-21
Updated: 2005-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:37:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1631975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by septicemic</p><p>Charlie on the periphery. (R for language, spoilers for season two)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tangling Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Unovis

 

 

Before Bill died, seeing Jane cry brought a weight of unhappy confusion to Charlie Utter's stomach. After, it became a regular thing.

She wasn't a girl to cry prettily, either. Her face got red, eyes puffed and squinty and snot ran down her lip. Her moods were patternless and impossible to predict: much of the time she threw empties at Charlie if he got near her when she was sobbing, but sometimes she'd aim her pistol at him, or in his general direction give or take a few feet, until he sat down with her. Sometimes she just wanted him to talk--not about the old days; about the postal system, new folks in town, the hardware boys' tribulations, the Widow Garrett and Sophia, whore gossip. He did what she wanted, even after he'd taken her bullets away. Sometimes she wanted to lie in his arms until she cried herself to sleep. He did that too. It was always the same when she woke up: "Fuckin' let go of me, Charlie Utter, or I'll fuckin' gut you, you fat cocksucker."

She was gone for more than six months, and he wondered if she'd found some poor prospector to cry on, or if she'd been adopted by coyotes.

*

He got drunk with Star and Bullock one night after hours in the hardware store, and they got into an argument over who was prettier, the widow Garrett or Trixie. It took a lot of whiskey to get Bullock going, but once he started in on the subject of Mrs. Garrett's ankles he wouldn't be interrupted. Finally Star turned to Charlie for arbitration.

"Well," he said, cloudy-headed, "you fellas make... your arguments are fuckin, fuckin'... fuckin' valid, the both of ya, but, uh... the _finest_ -lookin' woman in this whole town, can't nobody convince me fuckin' otherwise, is... is Joanie Stubbs. Goddammit." He smacked his thigh to say that he would not be moved, and then fell asleep.

He woke up as Star was unlocking the front door, and as he was walking the perimeter to shake off the previous night's fog, in floated Joanie, dressed in red. "Mor--" he said, swallowed to clear the sticky dryness in his throat, and finished, "morning, Miss Stubbs."

"Mr. Utter," she said, smiling. "Fancy some breakfast?"

"Yes ma'am. If you'll permit me to change my clothes first."

"If you like," she said, turning over a washbasin to inspect it for cracks.

He met Star on the way out. "You might could have a point," he said, and Charlie felt the back of his neck get a little warm, though that could've been the morning sun.

*

"You never fuckin' missed me at all, you cocksucker."

The package Charlie was holding fell from his hands onto his toe, and he yelped and spun around. "Jesus Christ, Jane!"

"What the fuck's the matter with you?"

"I'm used to your noisy boots fuckin' announcin' you before you start in cussin' at me."

"Well, I sincerely apologize for walkin' softly and bein' mostly fuckin' sober!" Charlie looked her over, and to his surprise, she was. "I just come from your hooker friend's fancy-named cathouse. She offered me a drink but I ain't taken it."

"How's she doin'?" Charlie asked.

"Sad-seemin'. I don't know. I'm'na go back there later on if I ain't too fuckin' inebriated. But _as I was sayin'_ before you started droppin' things and haraguin' me: you are fulla shit, Charlie Utter, if you're still pretendin' to have missed my fuckin' presence in this shithole while you were steppin' out with _her_."

"Miss Stubbs and I have not been 'steppin' out,'" Charlie said defensively. "We've been breakfasting together is all."

Jane didn't seem to be including him in the conversation anymore. "Person might could mistake that one for a proper lady," she said, eyes wandering. "Never seen such a grand-lookin' whore my whole life. Kind who wouldn't pay a penny for a dozen a' me." She turned suddenly back to Charlie, glaring. "Not that I have ever been that fuckin' thirsty!"

"I didn't say nothin'," Charlie said, lifting his hands.

*

As far west of civilization as they were, there were dangerous men all over, but they seemed to congregate in Deadwood. Not just killers--he had met only two men who would shrink long from ending a life during his time in the camp, and one of them was now dead by road agents' hands, as the story was told--but killers without restraint, men whose remembrance of the Sixth Commandment slipped when they were drinking or was never there at all. Most who were his age had learned the ways of killing in the '60s, in a uniform of blue or gray. Charlie had put in his time in the blue as a young man, in the 9th Illinois, but he hadn't acquired the taste. Besides, between him and Bill and Jane, there had to be one person who could behave.

And yet Francis Wolcott's face seemed made to be smashed, his arms and legs built to be broken, the cowardly heart behind his ribs calling to be torn out and pissed on and thrown away for filthy dogs to gnaw. _Lord, thank you,_ he prayed silently as he brought the heel of his boot down on Wolcott's nose, _for blessing me with the chance to beat this cocksucker to death in full view of You and everyone._

When Bullock pulled Charlie away, he nearly screamed.

*

Putting her to bed was less than easy, as she passed out halfway through the door of Utter Freight and became, in all her buckskins, at least one hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight. With a lot of sweat and cursing he got her into a fireman's lift, staggered to the cot, and unloaded her onto it, not very gently, but she never stirred.

There was a chilly draft, and an idea came to him. He went up to the attic and opened several crates before he found what he was looking for. It smelled of mothballs, and black powder, and Bill.

He carried it delicately down the ladder, draped it over her, sat down to keep an eye on her in case she started to choke, and after a while he thought how when she was sleeping she looked like a young girl.

*

Their wagon train stopped at Laramie, and that was where Charlie followed the line of Bill's pointing finger to a ring of half a dozen enlisted men and a captain, surrounding a tall, mud-caked boy wearing a union suit and a pair of Army trousers. Bill sauntered casually in that direction, wind picking up his curls, and Charlie went along, uncertain.

The captain had a rifle on the boy in the union suit. "Them trousers belong to the U.S. Army," he was saying. "Best give them back too."

" _Fuck you,_ " the boy hollered.

"Burn 'em's the only thing to do," one private said to another. "Got the cunt-reek in 'em." The soldiers snickered.

The boy's face was a deep, unhealthy red. "Fuckin' laugh!" he yelled, "I'm gonna piss in the coffins a' all you cocksuckers!"

"Give the fuckin' trousers back," said the captain, "you filthy-mouthed cunt, and fuckin' git. Whore's Alley's to your left."

"Now," Bill said calmly, taking a slow, deliberate step forward. "The army teach you to talk that way to a woman?"

"Who the fuck are you?" said the captain, but recognition was already dawning in some of the other soldiers' eyes, and they seemed to be trying to shrink into themselves and disappear.

"Name's Hickok." He adjusted the tilt of his hat, and his coat lifted with the movement of his arm so that the pearl handle of one of his six-shooters could be seen gleaming underneath. "Called Bill."

Charlie could see the captain's mouth form the silent words _Jesus Christ_. Then he turned stiffly toward Bill, lowering his rifle and drawing himself up, and said, "This half-woman's been impersonating a soldier of the 7th U.S. Cavalry--"

"Bull- _shit!_ " said the boy-- _girl_ , apparently, although Charlie still couldn't tell. She was addressing Bill now, too. "I enlisted same as these cocksuckers, now they wanna kick me the fuck out without benefit a' fuckin' discharge!"

"They got a reason to do that, other than you bein' female?"

"Fuck no," she said triumphantly. Now the captain's face was turning red. "I been ridin' and scoutin' and fightin' fuckin' Indians with these shitheels all the way from Utah, good as any of 'em, fuckin' better'n most when sober."

"Charlie," Bill said. "Wouldn't a rider and scout and Indian fighter be of use to you runnin' this here train?"

"Jesus, Bill, I don't know," Charlie said, and Bill lifted his right eyebrow.

"Can drive cattle too," she said. "Know my way 'round a whip."

"Shit," the captain said, and spat. "You fellas want her, you take her, and good riddance. Watch she don't give you the pox." The girl made to swing at him, but Bill was close enough to grab her by the arm.

"Odds ain't often good when you try to start a fistfight with a man holdin' a rifle," he said. _Wish you would learn to tell good odds from bad at your fuckin' cards,_ Charlie didn't say. She looked at Bill warily from under furrowed eyebrows, like a raccoon or some other class of wild animal, and then smiled widely.

"Pleased to meetcha, I'm Jane Cannary," she said, and there was the barest shade of femininity present in the smile.

Later on, when Charlie asked what the fuck the whole scene was about, Bill only said, "Some things I don't like to see. I see 'em, I put a stop to 'em."

*

He'd known about Joanie for a long time, but it didn't rise to his consciousness until the Ellsworths' wedding. Jane, scrubbed and beskirted, was actually looking like a woman--though she hadn't stopped swearing like a bullwhacker--and Joanie, dressed in pink and back to herself, had her hand resting on the small of Jane's back above her bustle. He looked, and had a drink, and looked again, and had he been offered a pound of raw gold for it he couldn't have told you what he was feeling.

"Look at him, the lemon-faced cocksucker," he heard Jane say. "Charlie Utter! You come the fuck over here and start fuckin' dancin' right this fuckin' minute!" When he got to where she was she grabbed his left arm and swung him around, laughing, and Joanie took the other. The band kicked into the fastest version of "Pretty Peggy-O" he had ever heard.

Four hours later the three of them were staggering down the thoroughfare. "Look the fuck away!" Jane hollered, although the only observers present were two unconscious miners lying in a puddle of piss. "Me with these dents fuckin' punched in my head," she said reflectively, "and you gettin' fuckin' uglier every day, Charlie, we're lucky we got Miss Joanie with us to bring the average back up to decent-lookin'."

" _Jane,_ " Joanie said indulgently. "No call to be mean. Charlie, you're wonderful. Ain't he wonderful?"

"Wonderful!" Jane yelled. "A _wonderful_ pain in my balls."

"You ain't got any balls, Jane," Joanie replied with the total seriousness of the deeply intoxicated. "I'd've found 'em by now." It was fortunate for Charlie that he couldn't get any redder, especially when Joanie leaned over and gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek that turned into a laugh against his ear. Jane looked slightly indignant, then did the same on the other side, though her kiss was sloppy and odorous of whiskey.

*

He dreamed sometimes that he was back at Shiloh, kneeling in the wet grass, cracking off three shots a minute into the Rebel line, second fastest reload in the company. Jane was next to him, sometimes, in her filthy half uniform, spitting curses and switching between rifle and pistol, though in reality she couldn't have been older than ten or twelve.

Sometimes Bill was there too, in the uniforms of a hundred different regiments, heaped in the field dead.

*

"This arrangement," Charlie said, "Jane livin' with you in your building. It's liable to be a... permanent one?"

"Permanent as anything gets around here," Joanie said. They were sitting together on Charlie's porch, downing whiskey, in sips on Joanie's part and long swigs on Charlie's. "You got feelings against women bein' with women?"

"No ma'am," Charlie said quickly, and then after a moment's pause, "That don't mean I claim to comprehend it, particularly."

Joanie smiled ruefully. "Well, let me put it to you this way, Charlie, and I know you'll excuse me bein' crude: I've seen a lot of pricks since I was twelve years old." Charlie flinched. "Might be I prefer to see somethin' else in my free hours."

There was another pause, and then Charlie said, "All right." He finished his bottle and rocked slowly in his chair. "She still loves Bill, you know," he said. "Nothin's gonna change that."

"I know," Joanie said. "I got my shadows too."

*

_Evenin', Bill._

I don't know if Jane's been up here to tell you the news recently, so, uh... forgive me if you have to hear somethin' twice. Been fuckin' eventful 'round here. I recall you always preferred to have the bad news first. Well--

Seth Bullock, who you took such a likin' to, who's sheriff now, uh, his boy William, little boy 'bout eight years old--he was, uh--he was run down in the street and, and killed, by a wild-tempered horse.

Whole camp turned out for his funeral, or nearly so. Andy Cramed officiated, you never met him, Jane found him in the woods near fuckin' dead, just after they... buried you, took care of him, he got better, and got religion too. Good with sick people, Jane is. I wish there was a proper hospital here could put her to work full-time.

Anyways, uh, that was the bad news, good news is, uh, the widow Garrett, who you counseled, she up and married Ellsworth who was overseein' the mining on her claim. He's a good man, Ellsworth. A very good man. Good with that little one, too.

And, uh, the other _good news, seems like good news, is Jane's moved in with Joanie, my friend Joanie Stubbs--I don't think you met her either, you'd remember if you had--tall, pretty blonde girl, real pretty, real high-class, but not the kind of high-class makes you feel small, you know--uh--anyways, Joanie was runnin' a fancy brothel up my end of town, I believe I told you 'bout that, and I sent Jane over there after that cocksucker murdered those girls of Joanie's--cocksucker's dead, speakin' of which, fuckin' hanged himself, better end than he fuckin' deserved--I was thinkin' maybe they could commiserate, uh... I don't know what I was thinkin', honestly, but they seem to be gettin' along real good with each other now. Better'n good, I think._

You'd be happy to see Jane happy. And so am I--I mean, I got no feelings about it except happiness for the both of 'em bein' happy, makes me happy, and, uh, that's all I am, happy.

Shit.

All right, Bill, I guess... lyin' to the dead don't make any sense, since you ain't about to tell Jane or anybody else what I said to you. I've got some fuckin'--fuckin' jealousy in me, that I can't seem to get shut of, and I don't know whether I'm jealous of Jane or Joanie or the fuckin' both of 'em, and I...

God damn it, Bill. Why couldn't you have sat with your fuckin' back to the wall.

God... fuckin'...

I, uh... I got some things to see to 'fore I turn in tonight. I'll be back to talk to you again soon. You know I'll be back. Don't, heh, don't fuckin' go nowhere.

'Night, Bill.

\-----

Author's note: I may have deviated from fact somewhat on the details of Jane Cannary and Charlie Utter's lives; but then, so did David Milch.

 


End file.
